Employee Spotlight: Chris Crane, PE

Get to know one of our talented engineers in the Charleston office! With 20 years of project management and mechanical engineering experience, Chris has provided mechanical, plumbing, fire sprinkler systems design and construction administration services on over 450 projects of varying size and complexity for commercial, corporate, military, higher education, hospitality and mixed-use, mission critical, industrial, K-12, and health care clients.

Chris is a graduate of Clemson University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering. He is a LEED Accredited Professional and a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE).

How has Newcomb & Boyd helped you in your career development? Working here has given me the opportunity to meet with regional and national clients, as well as industry leaders, that I likely would not have met while at my previous places of employment. These interactions, along with the diversity of projects that I have worked on at Newcomb & Boyd have made me a better engineer.

Where is the best place you’ve traveled to and why? My family went to South Dakota last year. It was truly amazing to see the scale and expanse of the open plains that still exist. Imagine a herd of a million head of buffalo grazing across the land as far as the eye can see.

What would you do for a career if you weren’t doing this? I wanted to be a fighter pilot growing up, but without 20/20 vision, I investigated aerospace engineering and ultimately landed on mechanical engineering. From a fanciful perspective, I wanted to be a professional golfer. Unfortunately, I was not blessed with natural freakish talent nor do I have the time to devote to the game necessary to make it to that level.

What is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome in your life thus far? Leaving my first consulting engineering job that I had worked at for 11 years to start my own firm in the Fall of 2008. We had to create our own details, schedules, and specifications from scratch to allow us to actually provide an engineering service. That took a tremendous amount of time to accomplish, for which there was no immediate income. In addition to the lack of income due to the myriad of start-up related tasks I mentioned above, there was also the complication of starting a business at the beginning of a massive and unanticipated economic recession.

Advice for a successful career in this industry? I have always explained to younger engineers that the consulting engineering vocation is one in which your professional growth is strongly influenced by how much effort you put into it. In other words, the more you dig into design strategies and system components via independent curiosity, group discussions amongst your peers, and technical sessions sponsored by outside topic experts, the better engineer you will be.

For more information on Chris Crane and our other firm leaders, please visit our Leadership Page